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Hundsjön is a very difficult lake to figure out. One day you can have great fishing, and then you'll have several weeks where the fish seem to be all gone. Other days you're hard work pays off, but only after hours and hours of effort. Today was one of those good day. Not only was the fishing good, but the weather and entire atmosphere as well.

In the Nordic countries we celebrate Christmas eve, not Christmas day, so while we have our big Christmas dinner and open presents on Christmas eve, Christmas day is usually spent lazing around the house, watching Christmas shows on Television, or visiting friends. When I started ice fishing here in Sweden in 2007 I started my own little tradition, and that was to spend Christmas day (December 25'th) out on the ice fishing. This is something that has stuck with me since then, and even now that I have a family I keep my tradition. My spouse and our daughter are both welcome to join me, but they both have chosen to stick with the traditional "resting day" in fromt of the TV, or having fun indoors.

I was thinking of writing a simple Christmas card to post on our facebook page, and send as E-mail to customers and friends, but I felt that it wasn't enough. In stead I'll write a little about this years events, and how we are doing at the Countryfisher.

For many years I had thought that Lauri Rapala was considered the father of lure building. At least that was what the sales pitch from the Rapala company and most sports fishing magazines in the Nordic countries seemed to want you to believe. When the Internet became available this view changed as I started to study the history of lure building. Fishing with artificial lures and flies are as far as we know today something that started as far back as with the ancient Greeks. Most anglers today have heard about how Lauri started to sell his lures, and his business grew until today being the largest lure manufacturer in the world. But was it really with Lauri that this piece of history started ? Did he really make his lures out of pine bark, and where did he get the idea to make his lures?